Find Support, Keep Spirits Up During Job Hunt

March 8, 1993|By JOYCE LAIN KENNEDY, Careers

Q. I hope you can help me because I am at the end of my financial, emotional and psychological rope. After mailing hundreds of resumes and going to dozens of interviews, I have not received an offer for a decent job. I`m earning less than when I was a bartender -- my MBA (master`s in business administration) isn`t worth the paper it was printed on. I feel as though the recession has finally beaten me and there is no relief in sight. Can you help me?

A. For free immediate personal help, contact your public employment service office and ask a counselor to put you in touch with a professional and managerial job-club support group.

Release emotional pressure by associating with others who have a stake in solving the same problems you face. The group can help you with job leads and job hunting advice. But, just as important, being reminded that others share your plight, that you`re not trying to climb the mountain alone, is uplifting.

Reading is another way to boost your spirits -- a giant factor in a successful search -- and improve your job hunt skills. In the motivation department, a lighthouse book has come along offering refreshing inspiration to job hunters, from newly graduated young people to newly bounced executives.

It`s Sharkproof: Get the Job You Want, Keep the Job You Love ... in Today`s Frenzied Job Market (Harper Business/HarperCollins) by Harvey Mackay, who also wrote Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.

Mackay`s basic premise is: Never do anything by halves. Don`t operate with half-hatched plans. Don`t mount half-baked job campaigns. Don`t go into job interviews only half ready to wow the employer. Among his many suggestions on how to avoid being half-effective:

``Take a reference to lunch. Take them all to lunch, one at a time. If you keep scoring aces on your interviews only to find that you never make the traveling squad, you better check out the basics. Keeping in touch with your references, and keeping them informed of your progress, is the best fire insurance you can buy.

``One size does not fit all. I suspect the reason you don`t get a single nibble when you send out a thousand resumes is because anyone who gets one look at it can see immediately that you sent out the exact same thing to 999 other potential employers. You have to customize. You have to go after your target with a rifle shot and not with carpet bombing. After all, whatever job you`re after is one of a kind.

``Potential employers are looking for a special person with special qualities. If they don`t feel that every one of the thousand people who apply is fit for the position, why should you expect that if you send out exactly the same resume to a thousand potential employers, there is any special reason for them to want to hire you? There`s just no substitute for doing your homework and making your approach fit the individual you`re pitching.

``It doesn`t hurt to know the other guy. If you`re applying for a job at Mackay Envelope (the author`s company), before you see the inside of our plant, be resourceful and visit another operation first. Take a tour of duty.

``Phone the Envelope Manufacturers Association of America and have them mail you a few copies of the trade publication and the latest propaganda on the issues facing the industry. Go to the post office. Go to a big direct mailer. They handle our products every day and they`ll tell you how envelopes are used, which ones work for one purpose, which ones for another. All envelopes are not created equal.

``Neither are all job candidates. Of the five hundred or so I`ve interviewed personally, only one has ever done this.``

Most memorable line in Sharkproof: ``Serial killers are on the loose, hacking away at every corporate personnel roster in the land.`` Mackay`s ideas can help you stay alive.

---- Joyce Lain Kennedy is a syndicated columnist who writes about careers. You may write her at P.O. Box 3090, Rancho La Costa, Calif. 92009.